When film first started gaining popularity, it want’s as obvious that be connecting two different images, we would assume their relation. Film simply document events that occurred, it wasn’t until the enterprising pioneers of early cinema took hold that they began to manipulate their audience into following a story their way and feeling it in those exact steps. Lev Vladimirovich Kuleshov a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist in the 1920s who taught at and helped establish the world’s first film school, the Moscow Film School. He was one of the very first film theorists and one the great pioneers of early editing regarded amongst worldwide filmmaker and he is famous for what became known as Soviet Montage.
From Kuleshov perspective, the essences of the cinema was editing was the act of placing two things near each other that contrasted each other. To show this principle, he created what we have come to know as today as the Kuleshov Experiment. There is a video of the Kuleshov experiment that is still currently functioning on the media-sharing site YouTube: The experimental video shows a shots of an actor Ivan Mozhukhin, intercut with various meaningful things a bowl of soup, a dead child inside a casket, a woman lying down. So it there was three shots was of an expressionless man looking at the camera, and juxtaposed that with three things mentioned (soup, child, and women). The actor doesn’t see them, they are mostly likely not connected, and quite frankly they could have been shot in separate places for all we know. It is the audience that voluntarily makes the connection, they assume they are directly related in some way in their head whilst consciously watching, the audience tries to create meaning by combining the two imag...
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EV KULESHOV | Directors. 2014. LEV KULESHOV | Directors. [ONLINE] Available at: http://directors-sovietcinema.tumblr.com/post/13422306315/lev-kuleshov. [Accessed 15 February 2014].
Lev Kuleshov. 2014. Lev Kuleshov. [ONLINE] Available at: https://mubi.com/cast_members/22859. [Accessed 15 February 2014].
Lev Kuleshov and his ‘effect’ « Early & Silent Film. 2014. Lev Kuleshov and his ‘effect’ « Early & Silent Film. [ONLINE] Available at: http://cinetext.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/lev-kuleshov-and-his/. [Accessed 15 February 2014].
Introduction to Film - Soviet Montage - YouTube. 2014. Introduction to Film - Soviet Montage - YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsUzglygW_s. [Accessed 15 February 2014].
"Posterity will not be able to understand our difficult and glorious period of life without intently listening to the works of Sergei Prokofiev, and contemplating his extraordinary fate." - Ilya Ehrenburg
Throughout the existence of the Communist regime in Russia that reigned from 1918 to 1989, many cinematic productions were made to highlight certain key areas of not only the Russian Revolution, such as Sergei Eisentien's "October", but also to identify many key characteristics of the individual that is placed amidst such a transition. Aleksandr Askoldov's 1967 production of "The Commissar" is arguably the most famous film portraying the various circumstances and conditions of individuals amidst the revolution. He focuses on a female commissar named Vavilova who, along with her Red army military unit, believe firmly in the communist revolution and are engaged in a civil war with tsar loyalists and various western troops known as the White army. Whilst Vavilova represents a strong, dominant and brutish depiction of women that is made clearly apparent very early on in the film, Askoldov also presents another portrayal of women through the character of Mariya, a traditional Jewish wife and mother of six. Askoldov enhances the depiction of women through the character of Vavilova herself who, as the film progresses, seems to transform from her hard exterior shown in the beginning of the film, into a more traditional woman such as Mariya. However, whilst it is conceivable to believe that Vavilova has transformed herself due to becoming a mother and living with a simple but loving family and away from the harshness and brutality of war, Yefim, Mariya's husband, suggests that Vavilova's feminine qualities have always existed, but have always been deeply buried, "#Does putting on breeches make you a man?." This suggests that Vavilova was forced to place a hard exterior around her in order to survive s...
Citizen Kane, directed by Orson Welles, was an exemplary and ground-breaking work. In narrative structure and film style, Welles challenged classical Hollywood conventions and opened a path for experimentation in the later 1940s. Gregg Toland’s deep-focus cinematography and Welles’ use of low-key lighting are often discussed aspects of the movie. True, these were areas of innovation, but when watching the movie in class I was particularly struck by the use of camera movement, or “mobile framing” as described in Film Art. In this historical analysis, I will take a detailed look at how Welles and Toland use camera movement to develop and challenge the Hollywood style. By referring to other movies viewed in Professor Keating’s class, including The Cheat, Wings, Applause, Double Indemnity, The Last Laugh and Bicycle Thief, this paper traces one aspect of innovation and diffusion in the movie many call the greatest film ever, Citizen Kane.
The Bolshevik Revolution was a defining turning point in Russian history. This overall revolution consisted of two individual revolutions in 1917 which resulted in the overthrow of the Tsarist government and the formation of a socialist society led by Vladimir Lenin’s radical Bolsheviks. For a moment with such enormous weight like the Bolshevik Revolution, there will be various interpretations on the true results of that moment and the meaning and value of these results. The film Man with a Movie Camera deals with the results of the Bolshevik Revolution and the early Soviet Society it birthed as it utilizes footage of one day in this early Soviet Union, thus making it worthy of examination. In the film Man With a Movie Camera, Vertov impressively
Johnson, Priscilla and Leopold Labdez (eds.). Khrushchev and the Arts: the politics of Soviet Culture, 1962-64. MIT Press, 1965.
The Alfred Hitchcock film; Vertigo is a narrative film that is a perfect example of a Hollywood Classical Film. I will be examining the following characteristics of the film Vertigo: 1)individual characters who act as casual agents, the main characters in Vertigo, 2)desire to reach to goals, 3)conflicts, 4)appointments, 5)deadlines, 6)James Stewart’s focus shifts and 7)Kim Novak’s characters drives the action in the film. Most of the film is viewed in the 3rd person, except for the reaction shots (point of view shot) which are seen through the eyes of the main character.(1st person) The film has a strong closure and uses continuity editing(180 degree rule). The stylistic (technical) film form of Vertigo makes the film much more enjoyable. The stylistic film form includes camera movements, editing, sound, mise-en-scene and props.
In this essay I will be analysing the use of cinematography in two films, using Peeping Tom (1960) directed by Michael Powell and Psycho (1960) directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The reason why I choose these two films is because although they are from the same genre, and from the same period, the methods both films use are similar and at the same time completely different.
...s appeared not so much to matter as the fact that he developed new techniques, devised camera approaches and sought always to bring out the potential of a still developing form. That he forgot--or overlooked--to bring the Marxist message to one of his films two years ago brought him that fatal kiss of all--the accusation from the authoritative Soviet magazine, Culture and Life, that his productions had been short on the prescribed Soviet requirement of art and interpretation of history” ("Sergei Eisenstein is Dead in Moscow”, New York Times, 1948) . In film, Eisenstein was known for his development of the montage sequence, his unusual juxtapositions, and his life-like imagery. In life he was known for his propaganda and belief in the plight of the working class. Eisenstein left an inevitable mark on his community, his time, the shape of a sub-culture, and his art.
...ican propaganda during the later period of the Cold War and its distortion of what threats lie at the relative east in an effort to raise concern over the intercontinental standoff. Even with the Cold War’s perpetuation since 1945, the tensions between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Russia are interceded only by the all too unfortunately plausible concept of Mutually Assured Destruction. During the height of the burgeoning motion picture industry and the apex of the cold war, the directors of such films intended on producing motion pictures that would depict Soviet Russia and its destructive and innovative potential. Thanks to this industry, the era would be successful in raising the American society’s sense of awareness toward the Soviet’s ingenuity; thus increase the support of the United States populous’ stance in the anti-Soviet movement.
With the discovery of techniques such as continuous editing, multiple camera angles, montage editing, and more, silent filmmaking developed from simple minute-long films to some of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring films that have ever been created—in only a few decades. In Visions of Light, someone alluded that if the invention of sound had come along a mere ten years later, visual storytelling would be years ahead of what it is today. This statement rings true. When looking at the immense amount of progress that was made during the silent era of films, one must consider where the art of film has been, where it is, and where it is
In the presented essay I will compare the style of work of selected artists in the montage of the film. I will try to point out some general regularities and features of Soviet cinema. At the same time I will try to capture especially what is common in their systems and similar or conversely what differ. For my analysis, I will draw on the feature films of the Soviet avantgarde, namely these are the movies - The Battleship Potemkin (S. Eisenstein, 1925), Mother (V. Pudovkin, 1926) and The Man with a movie camera (D. Vertov, 1929).
Alder, Peter. "Stalin: Man of Steel." Prod. Guido Knopp. Dir. Oliver Halmburger. Perf. Ed Herrman. The History Channel, 2003. Videocassette. Youtube. 15 Mar. 2013. Web. 12 May 2015.
In describing the setting, the general locale is the prison in the coldest part of Russia- Siberia, geographically but socially depicting the social circumstances in the prison, but draws analogies to the general social, political and economic circumstances of Russia during the Stalinist era (form 1917 revolution up to 1955). The symbolic significance of the novel and the film (genres) reflects experiences, values and attitudes of the Russian society. The genres reflect the origins of the Russian social disorders and massive counts of political misgivings which watered down real communism in Russia. We are constantly reminded of the social and cultural heritage and originality of Russian ethnic groups through those different levels of meanings
Brownlow, Kevin 1994, ‘Preface’, in Paolo, C, Burning Passions: an introduction to the study of silent film, British Film Institute, London: BFI, pp. 1-3.
‘Then came the films’; writes the German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin, evoking the arrival of a powerful new art form at the end of 19th century. By this statement, he tried to explain that films were not just another visual medium, but it has a clear differentiation from all previous mediums of visual culture.